Topic: Donatism

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Donatism began about 312 CE, when a group known as the Donatists (so named after their leader Donatus) split away from the Catholic Church of North Africa because of the election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage.

The Donatists believed that Caecilian's ordination was invalid because one of his consecrators had been a traditor, one of those who surrendered copies of the sacred scriptures during the great persecution.

Despite persecution (317-321) and the Vandal invasion of 429, Donatism remained into the seventh century, when it and Catholicism were overcome by the Islamic religion and Christianity became extinct in North Africa.

Donatism, with its impossible ideal, already began to despise the culture which seemed to help its defeat and withdrew into its sensitive shell after the manner of all puristic tendencies under persecution.

The two prevalent lines of attack are the historical on the origin of the schism, which involved the dissection of the documents, and the doctrinal, or the discussion of the true notes of the Church from the basis of the Scriptures.

Of three fundamental points of Donatism, as perpetuated practices of North Africa, rebaptism and the encouragement of a martyr spirit with its attendant feasts, the continuance of the Seniores in the government of the Church, we find Augustin aiming mainly at the overthrow of the first two.

Donatism was essentially a response to alternating periods of persecution followed by toleration, culminating in the beginning of the fourth century by the formal legalization of Christianity by Constantine.

The Donatists held that Christians who had caved in to persecution were no longer fit to occupy positions of leadership in the Church, and, perhaps more importantly, had lost the grace of the Holy Spirit to effectively administer sacraments.

Though Donatism did flourish again in the sixth century, the entire North African Church was weakened and compromised by the internecine fighting, and proved unable to withstand the attractions of Islam in the seventh century, when the Christian church disappeared entirely from western North Africa.

Donatism was from its inception a popular movement, poor in original ideas, but nevertheless full of people who were easily inflamed and drawing from these its principal strength.

In keeping with its violent past, the last vestiges of Donatism vanished in the seventh century as its adherents were mowed down by the sword of Islam, the cry of "Deo laudes" being replaced by "Alahu Akbar," which heralded the Muslim subjugation of North Africa.

In its retention of the all of the liturgical externals of Catholicism and most of its doctrines while rejecting a single doctrine or practice, Donatism is mirrored by groups that might be characterized as rigorist.

Donatism was a schismatic group in North Africa which, in the 4th century, separated from the Gnostics and followed a leader named Ticonius, who espoused the teachings of Donatus, who had founded Donatism.

Donatism, with its extreme writings and teachings, gave encouragement to the de-emphasis of the Second Advent.

During the late-2nd and early-3rd centuries, Augustine, who was born in 354 and died in 430, was the number one thinker, theologian, teacher, pride and joy of Roman Catholicism.

Donatism is the belief that all sacramental efficacy is inextricably linked with the moral worth of the particular minister of the particular sacrament, and by extension with the moral worth of the group or church or sect to which that minister belongs.

Among the challenges facing the Christian church over the course of those two generations, along with adjusting to its new status as the publicly favored religion of the empire, were controversies which, given the church’s new relationship with the Roman state, were inevitably caught up in imperial politics.

One, Donatism, was a disciplinary problem with underlying theological issues, while another, Arianism, was a theological controversy that quickly involved matters of discipline.

Along with the danger of Pelagianism, Donatism posed a major threat to the orthodoxy of the Christian Church of North Africa.

The integrity of Augustine’s responses to both Pelagianism and Donatism contributed to his increasing stature as a “Doctor of the Church,” the most significant Christian theologian since the apostolic Sts.

Ultimately, Augustine overwhelmed Donatism because he gave God’s Church a vision of spiritual authority that was to guide it in principle for the next millennium.

My understanding of donatism is that it had to do with the efficacy of certain priestly activity.

Donatism has to do with the validity of sacraments, not the propriety of receiving communion from someone one knows to be a heretic.

If one picks up a dictionary of church history or a basic overview, he or she would discover that the error of Donatism was in refusing to recognize the validity of a sacramental act (specifically, a baptism or an ordination) performed by a priest or bishop considered unworthy.

titusonenine.classicalanglican.net /index.php?p=1403 (4747 words)

Donatists Description(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)

Donatism was the heresy propagated first by Donatus, a bishop of Carthage (313-355), who led a protest against Catholic practices.

Despite persecution (317-321) and the Vandal invasion of 429, Donatism survived into the seventh century in North Africa, when it and Catholicism were overcome by Islam.

Nonetheless, Augustine became Donatisms's chief rival, and his writings remained highly influential in the fight to erradicate the heresy.

It has been alleged that the Baptist practice of extending church membership only to those who have been baptised as believers is Donatism.

Anyone who has followed the debate can see that it has nothing to do with the person who administers the baptism; rather, it has to do with the appropriate subject for baptism.

Ironically, the commentor who disputed this defines Donatism much as CARM does: "donatism was concerned with the validity of the sacraments administered by people who supposedly did not have the right to administer them.

pewview.mu.nu /archives/184239.html (568 words)

203. Augustine(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)

Later, against the Pelagians, he asserted that there is no true freedom apart from grace, a doctrine which required, he thought, the complementary teaching of double predestination.

Donatism: The teaching that those who sin gravely must be rebaptized; priests be reordained.

Became a major theological issue with which the African bishop of Hippo, Augustine, had to deal.End of Donatism: Take-over of Africa by Saracens in 7th-8th centuries.

The issue of "donatism" has oft been brought up by the voices of "world Orthodoxy" to try and maintain that the stand of resistance authored by Blessed Metropolitan Philaret is not only illegitimate, but heretical.

It is to be clarified that donatism involves the condemnation of another party because of "their personal sins", not the errancy or schism of their doctrine, which as those links provided show, has sound Patristic foundation.

Furthermore, the mention of "Catacomb successions", those which have the blessing of the "historically canonical authorities in Russia" comes up, because it validates resistance to the sergianist MP and questions the ROCOR moral collapse of the MP as the "legitimate interlocutor" in what can be termed a "new normal".

Theologian Thomas Oden correctly states that never in the history of the catholic Church have the sexual activities of the clergy been unimportant (Oden 182-183).

My point in quoting all of these Fathers and Councils is to show that during and after the Donatist controversy the catholic Church did not abandon moral standards for clergy or laity, nor cease disciplining clergy for habitual immoral behavior.

While catholics opposed the rigorism of Donatism, clergy were still held to very high standards.

For example, he displays a penchant for local varieties of Christian worship and argues that Donatism, the native Christian religion of North Africa, could have better survived the Vandals and even Islam, than Augustine’s Catholicism.

O’Donnell is thorough in his discussion of the major religious controversies in which Augustine was embroiled: Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism.

He prefers Donatism because it held to a universal truth present within a limited community of the pure.

It is unknown how long this belief persisted into the Muslim period, but some Christian historians believe the Donatist schism and the discord it caused in the Christian community made the takeover of the region by Islam easier.

Donatus and the Donatist Schism - List of primary and secondary sources on the Donatists.

Donatists in the Catholic Encyclopedia - goes into some detail about the politics in the early church that was the background for the rise and fall of Donatism.